The President of Moldova, Vladimir Voronin, expressed his opposition to renaming the Moldovan language to Romanian and renouncing Moldova’s communist past for the sake of easing integration into the European Union, reported Interlic news agency.  In a discussion on the future of Moldova in the EU at a conference on security in Munich, Voronin decisively rebuked the Romanian representative who suggested that if Moldova renamed its language to Romanian and distanced itself from its communist past it would significantly ease its transition into the European Union.  Moldova’s president reiterated that determining the name of the official government language was an issue that could only be decided by the people of Moldova.  According to the news source, Voronin acknowledged that the Romanian and Moldovan languages were “absolutely identical,” but stated that each country was free to name it as they saw fit. The Moldovan president also reminded the conference that in a 2004 referendum, 84 percent of the population voted to maintain Moldovan as the name of the language.

This information was originally published on February 10, 2008. (www.interlic.md).